Don Jail has done its time: After 150 years of controversy, notorious Toronto facility to be shut down

Don Jail in Toronto closing after 150 years of controversy

The Don Jail is full of ghosts.

Ghosts of the executed, of the murdered, of the suicides; ghosts of their countless victims, whose legacies are forever tied to these men. The terrible history hangs heavy in the hallways, reveals itself in the etchings on cell walls, still preserved beneath layers of thick paint.

But after casting its shadow over east-end Toronto for a century and a half — surviving a raft of controversies and repeated calls for reform — the city’s most notorious jail is preparing to ship out its final inmates and shut down for good. The oldest section, featuring the iconic limestone image of Father Time above its entrance, has already morphed into administrative offices for the new Bridgepoint hospital next door, which begins treating patients this weekend. The rest of the Don, attached to the east end of the original building, will be decommissioned and torn down once the province opens its replacement, the Toronto South Detention Centre in Etobicoke, this fall.

“It is almost like the end of an old era of doing business at the Toronto Jail, into a new type of corrections,” says superintendent Randy Denis, referencing the Don by its formal name. He started as a Don guard back in 1991; now, after working at various jails throughout the province, he has returned to oversee its decommissioning. But while he acknowledges the need to “turn a page,” Mr. Denis is quick to play down the Don’s dark reputation, suggesting it stems largely from public ignorance.

“The ability to connect with inmates is easier at the Toronto Jail than at other facilities I’ve been through,” he says, citing a “camaraderie and professionalism” among staff. “I will always look back at the Toronto Jail with fond memories.”

That’s how it is with the Don. There are those, like Mr. Denis, whose recollections of the jail are nostalgic and fiercely protective. And there are others who speak just as plainly about the jail’s failings, from severe overcrowding, to spillover gang violence, to the constant flow of drugs and weapons. Lawyers, prisoners, judges and politicians have in turn excoriated the Don over the years; in a famous 2003 ruling, Justice Richard Schneider granted a convicted gun criminal three-for-one credit for pretrial custody there, calling the Don a national “embarrassment” that fell short of the United Nations’ minimum standards for the treatment of prisoners. Some inmates have purportedly pleaded guilty just to escape the deplorable conditions.

“It was very bad,” concurs Kari Niemi, who worked as a Don guard for close to four decades before retiring in 2011. Relaxing in a black leather armchair with a purring tabby in his lap, the 64-year-old Swede speaks animatedly, gesturing with his hands as he describes how some inmates slept in cots in the common room when they ran out of space in the already-overstuffed cells. Rats and cockroaches were a common nuisance, particularly in the old Don — “when the lights went out they were absolutely everywhere” — and the smell of human waste was at times overpowering.

“You could complain,” Mr. Niemi acknowledges, “but there was nobody that really did anything about it.”

*****

Built in 1864 on the eastern shore of the eponymous river, the Don was the fourth jail to rise in the rapidly growing city of Toronto. And much like its looming closure — initially slated for this spring, but since pushed back to an unspecified date in late 2013 — the jail’s creation was beset by delays.

First, architect William Thomas died suddenly, leaving his sons to step in. Then, in the winter of 1862, a massive fire engulfed the centre block. Issues with insurance claims pushed the completion date back further, explains Douglas Olver, who is writing a book on the history of Ontario prisons for the provincial Corrections Ministry.

Designed to hold remanded prisoners awaiting trial, the Don sometimes housed entire families in tiny brick cells when prisoners’ wives and children were too destitute to survive alone on the outside. During the nearly 12 hours of overnight lockup, a solitary bucket inside the cell served as a bathroom.

Some men returned from the war only to descend into depression and alcoholism, receiving short sentences for petty offences. For them, the Don was a warm bed and a revolving door.

“I am glad I am here because the streets are killing me,” one man scribbled onto his cell wall.

Wrote another: “God help the people who stay here.”

An estimated 34 men died at the Don’s gallows before capital punishment was abolished in 1976 — the most of any regional jail. The final two hangings occurred in 1962, when Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin, convicted in separate murder cases, were put to death inside the Don.

The impact on staff cannot be overstated, Olver notes.

While the hangman was a federal employee who travelled from jail to jail, Don staff had to monitor death row inmates for months before the executions — shaving them and feeding them, playing cards to while away the hours. In the end, these same guards were left to untie the knotted rope and send the slain inmate away in a hearse.

After the final two hangings, “even the governor came down the stairs and broke down and cried quietly,” says Olver, who keeps the old Don’s forearm-sized front-door key framed in his office.

“[The night of a hanging], they all knew,” he adds. “The jail gets really quiet because all the inmates know. You could hear a pin drop.”

That pervasive fear of the gallows is believed to have led to the suicide of inmate Frank Rutledge, who — at the turn of the 20th century — dove headfirst from the catwalk overlooking the old jail’s grand central rotunda, a place filled with sunlight.

Many years later, an archeological team dug up the Don’s east yard and located the remains of 15 executed prisoners, subsequently identified and reinterred at St. James Cemetery.

As the Don’s notoriety grew over the years, fuelled by a series of high-profile escape attempts, inquiries were struck to shed light on what went on inside — a matter of much public speculation. Among the findings of two royal commissions, one in the 1950s and another in the 1970s, were that the jail was “grossly overcrowded” and massively understaffed, with sometimes only a handful of guards overseeing 600 prisoners. The commissions found violent and mentally disturbed patients tied to their beds for lack of any other effective control mechanisms. There was also evidence of prisoner mistreatment, including one particularly sadistic guard who threatened to pluck out inmates’ eyes and pull out their fingernails with pliers.

In November 1958, nearly two decades before the old Don ceased operations, the newer building officially opened its doors.

“Compared to the old jail, it was light years ahead,” Mr. Niemi says. “They had showers and every cell had a sink and toilet. They had big tables where you could eat.”

But it, too, would soon suffer from systemic violence, overcrowding and unsanitary conditions, including a black mould infestation revealed just last month. Gang-on-gang beatings remain a common problem, exacerbated by a seemingly endless supply of contraband weapons, from sharpened toothbrushes to blades fashioned out of scraps of metal.

Others make do with their fists.

In late 2009, Troy Campbell beat fellow inmate Jeff Munro to death over a bag of chips. Mr. Munro was 32, a professional dancer who suffered from schizophrenia and succumbed to crystal meth addiction before landing in the Don. Within days of his intake, Mr. Munro was dead.

“This system failed my son hugely,” says his mother, Christine Munro. She is angry the Don has remained open all these years, despite waves of public criticism about the conditions within. She is suing the Corrections Ministry for failing to protect her son — a small measure she hopes will foster greater accountability throughout the system.

“It’s difficult. It’s very difficult,” Ms. Munro says. “The birthdays and the family get-togethers. I find it very difficult even being in Toronto now; I think we all do. It’s the city that Jeff loved… Toronto was his life.”

*****

There is a wounded, skittish look to this prisoner’s warm brown eyes.

Jason (not his real name) has agreed to speak on condition of anonymity about his experience inside the Don. The fear of retribution can attach itself to almost anything in this place.

Jason is polite and soft-spoken, but his eyes betray defeat as he perches on a blue plastic chair under the interview room’s fluorescent lights. He is 23 and already appealing a first-degree murder conviction in an alleged gang hit. He was shipped to the Don after being charged in an unrelated assault case.

It is a lonely existence, Jason says.

“I choose not to make friends [here],” he says. “It’s a bad idea to make friends because they can drag you into a lot of things… I’d rather just do my time.”

Jason is the third prisoner in a cell made for two. He witnesses fights at least once a week, often over things as innocuous as who gets to serve the food — a desired task because it means more time outside the cells. Jason is the type to quietly intervene, whenever he can. En route to today’s interview, he broke up a looming fight after one prisoner told a weaker inmate to “kiss my shoe.”

Before his conviction, Jason was an elite soccer player, a carpenter’s apprentice, the father of a baby girl and boy. He says the Don changes everyone who walks through its doors. But on the scale of provincial jails, he adds, the Don is not the worst. There is more collegiality between guards and inmates here, perhaps a function of the jail’s layout — “tighter and closer,” as Mr. Denis describes.

The reality is that the Don experience is not black and white. For a place so publicly reviled, it is begrudgingly defended by prisoners like Jason, and even by some defence lawyers. Guards who lambaste the Don’s shortcomings will, in the same breath, accuse the media of fomenting its sinister reputation.

“The Don has a bad rep in some circles because of its age and antiquated machinery. [But] as it aged, the Don’s saving grace was its people,” says veteran defence attorney Christopher Hicks, who has represented many clients at the Don. “The dominant ethos was to do your time in the easiest possible fashion and with the least amount of conflict. The staff made it clear that they could handle trouble but didn’t want any.”

During a rare tour arranged for the National Post, orange-clad inmates cracked jokes and requested the latest hockey scores from behind pale blue-and-white bars in their common areas. This is where they spend most of their time. Though inmates are supposed to get 20 minutes of yard exercise daily, some say they barely get out twice a week.

The yard itself, empty on a recent afternoon, is surrounded by towering brick walls and covered by a gargantuan expanse of netting to prevent any items being tossed overtop.

“They used to put contraband in dead birds and throw them over the wall,” Mr. Denis explains. They still sometimes try.

Mr. Denis believes the Don can prepare guards to work at any other provincial institution, thanks largely to its high volume of inmate traffic; while the Don’s capacity is about 550, it routinely sleeps dozens more.

“You will see everything happening within the Toronto Jail within, let’s say, a month that might take you months to see in other facilities,” he says.

Dan Sidsworth, a former Don guard who now represents correctional officers with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, says jail staff carry great pride in what they do, despite the daily challenges associated with what he describes as “one of the worst places to work as a correctional officer.” Mr. Sidsworth was once jumped by a Don prisoner, requiring 29 stitches to his face.

More often, guards — who are barred from carrying weapons — are injured while trying to intervene in inmate-on-inmate violence, says a veteran jail officer speaking on condition of anonymity. Spillover gang violence has become an increasing source of tension, with street shootings leading to “payback” beatings and stabbings on the Don’s ranges. The number of prisoners requesting protective custody has ballooned in recent months.

“We have a duty to protect the inmates and you don’t know what the situation is; it just explodes in front of you,” the guard says. “Are they muscling someone to bring drugs in, or is it a beef from the street, or did somebody just sleep with someone’s girlfriend? Who knows, but you’re in the middle of it in an instant.”

The negativity and stress “wears you down over time,” he adds. There is something about the constant exposure to the worst of humanity — the liars, the drug dealers, the thieves, the murderers. Society is mollified when these offenders land behind bars, but inside the Don, it is a whole other world.

The night after he first visited the Don more than two decades ago, Mr. Denis admits he had nightmares. He was unsettled by the iron serpents and dragons overlooking the rotunda, by the creaking wooden floors and the broader sense of doom.

The Don is different now. Inside Bridgepoint’s new offices, only the brick outlines of old cells have been preserved. A shiny boardroom table and plastic-wrapped chairs contrast jarringly with the peeled paint on chapel walls. In the gallows, the wooden platform has been removed, leaving but an imprint along the wall.

The jail’s active portion is still bustling, but not for long. Soon it will be torn down to make way for Bridgepoint’s parking lot and greenspace, as the hospital “transforms a place of incarceration to a place of innovation and healing,” CEO Marian Walsh says.

The ministry, meanwhile, touts the new 1,650-prisoner Toronto South Detention Centre — which also replaces the Toronto West jail — as a vast improvement over the Don. The living units will be mostly self-contained, with separate yard access on each range, limiting the necessary movement of prisoners through the facility. Guards will offer “direct supervision” by working inside inmates’ living units, a system that has met with success in the United States. A new video link-up process will streamline visitations.

There can be no doubt, Mr. Sidsworth says: the Don has outlived its usefulness. It is time to say goodbye, though the jail’s controversial legacy will endure for decades to come.

“The Don, it doesn’t leave you,” Mr. Sidsworth says. “It doesn’t matter what side of the bars you were on.”